


In Short Supply

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Humor, Late at Night, M/M, Office Supplies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 09:29:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15771348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Roy supposes that this is what he gets for having the audacity to work so late.





	In Short Supply

**Author's Note:**

> So this concussion expert was giving a lecture, and he was like, "Almost everyone who comes in with a concussion reports problems sleeping," and I was like HELLO, THAT'S A FIC and immediately emailed myself a note. Then I cooked up a thing and shoehorned it into "beginnings" for [Roy/Ed Week](http://royedweek.tumblr.com/), because that's what we're doing this year. XD I liked it better when I wrote it than I do at now, but TOO LATE. Aaaaaand it's another Ed-works-for-someone-else-in-the-military-now AU.
> 
> Also, just in case it isn't self-evident, the first bit of this is me making fun of myself. X'D

There are so many clauses in this sentence that Roy is seriously considering walking down to the legal department first thing tomorrow morning and pointedly setting a grammar handbook on fire.  Ideally, he’d like to do it now, but given that the clock hands just crept past midnight, it’s extremely unlikely that the culprit responsible for the unconscionable abuse of all of these semicolons is still on the premises, and it will be a more effective gesture if there are witnesses anyway.

Does he have a grammar handbook?  He inherited a significant portion of Berthold Hawkeye’s library, but among the many things that Hawkeye senior will be remembered for—by the select few unfortunate enough to have spent time in his company, that is—Roy doesn’t list ‘syntax stickler’ anywhere particularly high on the list.  Perhaps he’ll have to buy one.  But that would require getting up early so that he can make his way to a bookstore before he blasts into the office at eight to make his literally incendiary statement, and the later it gets, the more excruciating that sounds.  How much would one of those books set him backh, anyway?  Melodrama is its own reward, of course, but with the opportunity costs rapidly rising, he’s reconsidering the ratio of impact to inconvenience, and—

There is a very loud crashing noise from down the hall, complete with a clang of what sounds like metal and a few skitter-shift-noise auditory aftershocks.

Roy supposes that it’s as good a time as any to stretch his legs.  Besides: if this is, in fact, some interloper whose motives are suspect, he would greatly enjoy rubbing it into their incompetent face just how bad they are at infiltration.

It takes him a somewhat anticlimactic twenty seconds to determine that he will not be getting to do any gloating of that particular variety.  No invader in the world would be stupid enough to begin an assault of Central Command by knocking down one of the wire shelves in the supply closet three doors down from the Flame Alchemist’s personal office.

The small mountain of upended office supplies, with a generous helping of housekeeping items tossed into the chaos, speaks more to an honest employee who may now be in some amount of absurd self-imposed peril.  Such a situation still sounds significantly more interesting than the contract that was swimming before Roy’s eyes, so he makes his way over towards the wreckage.

As it turns out, the shelf sprawled halfway out the doorway into the hall is not the only one that has suffered: its nearest brother has capsized, too, and is pinning an extremely annoyed figure dressed in a black T-shirt and the standard-issue blue wool trousers.

For several long seconds, Roy just… looks.

“ _What_?” Ed says.  “You gonna stand there staring like an idiot, or are you gonna help?  Probably also like an idiot, but that makes two of us, so that’s fine.”

“I need a moment,” Roy says.  “I’m struggling to find words to encapsulate the nuances of my lack of surprise.”

“Why are you even here this late?” Ed asks.

“I could ask you the same question,” Roy says.

“Sure,” Ed says. “But that’d be stupid, and in the meantime I might die.”

He’s holding the shelf well clear of his vulnerable ribcage with the automail arm, and Roy suspects that his left foot is bracing it at the other end.  “True.  What a terrible shame.  I’d probably weep while I related the sordid story to the press.  How many office supply jokes do you think I could slide in before they noticed?”

“Knowing you,” Ed says, “about a million.  Can we get to the part where you revel, and I’m super fucking humiliated, and then you take pity on me?”

Never let it be reported that Roy Mustang is not a merciful man.  “Oh,” he says, “all _right_.”

Fortunately—perhaps?—most of the items that had, until recently, resided on the shelf made a swift exodus towards the floor when it toppled, and the structure itself isn’t quite as heavy as Roy had feared.  It’s the work of a few moments and a bit of leverage to manhandle it upright again, and then Ed pops up like a gold-ponytailed jack-in-the-box and plants his hands on his hips.

“Cool,” he says.  “You can go back to work now.  You should probably go home and go to bed, but if you wanna stay here and ruin your circadian rhythms, I guess I can’t stop you.”

Roy considers the second shelf that met with an unfortunate fate, and also the sea of supplies all over the floor.

“Why are you even in this wing?” he asks.

“Your closets are stocked way better than ours,” Ed says.  “Guess all that ass-kissing you do is paying off.”

“At last,” Roy says.  “My nefarious plan to procure a better selection of office supplies has finally come to fruition.  What are you looking for?”

Ed picks up a large box of paperclips that blessedly stayed shut, checks beneath it as if something could possibly be hidden under ten square inches of cardboard, and then settles it on one of the shelves.  “Compass.”

Roy would not put it past him to have taken up cartography and/or navigation in his spare time, but he suspects that Ed’s looking for the drafting tool.  For now, at least.

“Why in the world would you need one?” he asks.  “You were the undisputed Intelligence department champion at drawing perfect circles blindfolded.”

Roy was a close second, but not quite as close as his dignity would have liked.  He practiced a bit afterward, in the hopes of an eventual rematch, but Riza also learned from the experience, and accordingly never left them alone in the office for more than five minutes at a stretch ever again.

“It’s not about the shape,” Ed says.  “It’s about comparative distances.”  He picks up a ream of typewriter paper next.  “Plus I’m tired.  Not on my best circle game.”

“Thank you for reminding me,” Roy says.  “What in heaven’s name are _you_ doing here so late?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Ed says, sorting through a selection of the miscellanea on the floor.  “It’s been really bad lately.  I talked to Knox about it, and he was saying it’s probably all the concussions over the years.  Maybe when Al was at the Gate, me sorta feeding him energy was making up for it, because it was making me so tired I was sleeping relatively regularly anyway, but now it’s catching up with me or whatever.”

“‘Or whatever’,” Roy says, sounding slightly faint even to his own ears.  “You probably just dealt yourself another one.”

“Doubt it,” Ed says.  “My head didn’t make contact with either the shelf or the floor.  I’m really careful these days.”

Roy looks at him.

Then Roy looks, rather pointedly, at the state of the closet around them.

“Shut up,” Ed says.  “Anyway, the _point_ is—it’s better to wake Al up once when I’m leaving than to be making a ruckus in the room for a couple hours while I wait to get tired, so… here we are.”  He lifts two more boxes, shoves them onto the shelves, and glowers at them as if the betrayal is personal.  “Which is, apparently, in a building that’s never even _heard_ of a goddamn compass.”

“There was an urban legend once,” Roy says, crouching down to attempt to start wrangling the downed shelf upright again.  “Only ever whispered behind closed doors to trusted comrades.  Easier than a protractor, and more precise… but how could such a thing _exist_?”

“You’re still a laugh riot,” Ed says, but he doesn’t turn fast enough to hide the trace of a smile.  “Good to know some things never change.”

“I have a reputation for scintillating wit,” Roy says, rescuing a considerable quantity of scattered pens.  “It’s not likely to uphold itself.”

“I thought your whole gig was controlling what people think without them ever noticing,” Ed says.

“It is,” Roy says.  There is altogether too much paper in this building, and altogether too much typewriter ink.  “But pulling strings and dropping hints is work in its own right.”

“That sounds like something that someone who doesn’t get any work done would say,” Ed says, stretching up onto his toes to push an enormous bin of sticky notes up onto a shelf.  Roy should really receive a medal for resisting the urge to comment.

“Edward,” he says.  “What on this godforsaken planet could compel me to be _here_ after midnight if I was capable of doing what I needed to be doing right now anywhere else in the entirety of the world?”

“I factored that in,” Ed says.  He nudges a pair of scissors with his foot, which is somehow such an utterly _Ed_ thing to do that a wave of nostalgia sweeps over Roy’s being, and for a moment he’s scared of drowning.  “I figure you are working—right _now_ , anyway.  But that’s only because you procrastinated so much all week up ’til now that you have a backlog, and Lieutenant Hawkeye heavily implied some things about bodily harm today, and you’d rather be here than dead, so you’re trying to catch up.”

Roy… hesitates.

It’s late—that was his first mistake.  No serious conversation should ever be had after eleven at night when one was up before seven; crucial centers of the brain shut down past a certain stage of wakefulness.  Roy can never be sure he has control of his own voice.  Exhaustion drags his guard down, batters through his barricades, leaves him weak and wondering—

“Do you really think that?”

Shit.

Ed, in the pause, had been forcing some more office-oriented miscellanea up onto one of the shelves that he can’t reach with his feet flat on the floor.  At the tone of Roy’s voice, he glances over his shoulder.

“Of course not,” he says.

As if it’s that simple.  As if it always has been.

“ _Jeez_ ,” he says, which is just as typical, albeit much less encouraging.  “Did you really think I really thought that?  Aren’t you supposed to be smart?”

“So goes the rumor,” Roy says.  “I’m not sure I put much stock in it, though.”

“Shut your face,” Ed says.  He shoves the latest box into place, drops onto his heels again, and folds his arms across his chest, raising a challenging eyebrow that is both much too familiar and terribly missed.  “For the _record_ , I didn’t request this whole reassignment thing because I don’t think you’re smart.  I’m not stupid enough to think you’re stupid.  And I didn’t do it because you’re a giant fucking dork who procrastinates when you get all stressed.  And I didn’t do it bec—”

“Giant?” Roy says.  “In comparison to whom, exactly?”

Ed bends to pick up the scissors, the better to point their blades at him imperiously.  “ _That’s_ why.  Smartass.”

“Learned from the master,” Roy says.  The day, the hours, the night have worn him so, so thin— “You… aren’t serious ab—”

“ _No_ ,” Ed says.  “Holy crap, is this your first all-nighter, or what?”

“It’s the first one in a while,” Roy says.  He picks up an unmarked box, shakes it, realizes that that was rather stupid, and then opens it.  “Ah.”

Ed’s back to rummaging on the floor.  “What’s ‘ah’?”

Roy turns the box towards him, tilting it so that he can see its contents.  “The end of your noble quest,” he says.  “Compasses galore.”

“See?” Ed says, grinning up at him.  “Knew there was a reason we kept your ass around.”

“I’m rather attached to it, myself,” Roy says.  “Or perhaps the opposite is apter.”

“Okay,” Ed says, standing again and brushing at some of the dust on his knees.  “No more all-nighters for you, pretty much ever.”

“I like that plan,” Roy says.

  


* * *

  


Evidently the plan begins tomorrow, or at the very least tonight is exempt.  Once they’ve more or less sorted out the closet, Ed starts babbling about the ways he intends to use his prize for quasi-research-related purposes and coaxes Roy down to the office where he works now, in several much less dangerous capacities than he ever did for Roy.

When they arrive, Ed looks at the pile of books, then looks at the clock, and then rounds it out with a look at Roy.

“Weird,” he says.  “I’m not… _tired_ , but…”

“You’d rather throw yourself into the river than do any more work just now,” Roy says.

“Unnervingly specific,” Ed says, “and even-more-unnervingly morbid, but—yeah.  I guess.”

“Well,” Roy says.  “I know at least one bar that serves ice cream floats until closing.”

Ed’s eyes light up.

Then they narrow.

“Are you asking me out?” he says.

“Outside?” Roy says.  “Yes.”

“You know what I fucking mean,” Ed says.  “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“That depends,” Roy says.

Ed stares at him like he’s suggested that they take to the streets and personally assault kittens.  “No, it _doesn’t_.  You either were, or you weren’t.  You don’t get to decide after the fact.”

“Fine,” Roy says.  “It wasn’t initially intended as anything more significant than a friendly overture towards an individual in whose presence I somewhat masochistically enjoy spending time, who happens to have a metabolism like a freight train and could probably do with an ice cream float or five after the evening he’s had.”

“I max out at three,” Ed says.  “Four made me barf once.”

It’s Ed’s turn to hesitate next, and in that tremulous instant—

Roy’s not the only one the night has ahold of, it appears.

There’s a moment where Ed’s weak, too.  And there’s a moment where he’s wistful.

“On the other hand,” Roy says.  “Occasions such as this can shift from one state of matter to another.”

Ed eyes him.  “Yeah.  All-nighter ban instated for your ass until further notice.  What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing much,” Roy says, holding the door for him.  “Just that if individuals embarking on a friendly overture experience ended up—just for instance—having more-than-platonic feelings by the middle of float number two, it could _become_ a date without much further ado.”

Ed, halfway through the door, with one foot out in the hall, goes completely still to stare at him.

Then Ed starts walking again—but not before Roy sees him starting to smile.

“That’d be just about weird enough for us, wouldn’t it?” he says.

Roy slips his hands into his pocket and follows, letting his heart rise until he can almost taste it in the back of his mouth.

“Just about,” he says.


End file.
